Guinea Pig of Love: The Love Coach Experiment

I'm on a first date with William, and I don't feel like myself. I'm not laughing, I'm not leaning forward eagerly, I'm not lobbing question after question at him. My love coach, Annie Lalla, has told me to stop all of that and pretty much everything else I do to make the inherently awkward inaugural date moderately comfortable for myself. And given that this is a bike date—yes, we're riding bicycles—I'm not exactly uncorking a bottle of Merlot. Where I see it as a coping mechanisms for staying relaxed while interacting with a new person, Annie sees it as a schtick that's keeping me from being my most authentic self—and even from true love.

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During our first session together, she calls me out for using "an impenetrable veneer of persona to manipulate the way the interaction goes" on dates, so I never find myself "cornered, vulnerable, exposed, uncomfortable, confused, looking dumb."

Honestly, I'm terrified of conversational silences. But it occurs to me that the fairly thick veneer serving as my protection could also be standing in the way of intimacy. I don't want to get hurt, and bad dates can hurt. "That's okay," Annie reassures me that I'm not the only one. "You're just trying to protect yourself. Instead of that, shelve your fear and allow yourself to be reinvented anew in this moment, without having to be whoever you were yesterday."

Annie's specific instructions for my date with William are painful. I feel cruel and uncaring while sitting stone-faced through his sardonic musings. I want him to like me, and I'm concerned that without my generous and obvious appreciation of his humor, he won't. I fear that he won't find me intriguing without my arsenal of journalistic inquiries. Since he's asking all of the questions, does he think that I just want to talk about myself? Does my cool body language ("lean back, lean back," orders Annie) turn him off?

It's exhausting. But afterward? Just as Annie predicted: I have a totally new perspective. Sometimes you don't even realize how much of a schtick you put on until it's taken away.

I've realized that my approach to dating isn't the most authentic, nor is it the most satisfying. I'm now careful not to laugh just to fill up silence. I really try to give the guy a chance to earn it. And while I do plan to ask questions (I'm a journalist, it's torturous not to), I now see that giving him verbal space to play offense—instead of just defensive responding—isn't such a bad move either.

As fascinating as I found the first date anti-autopilot exercise, unearthing this pattern was valuable insomuch as realizing it's a symptom of a much deeper problem. Perhaps the biggest obstacle between me and the relationship I seek, is my deep-seated insecurity that should a man discover my flaws, he will no longer love me, which manifests a disheartening quest for perfection. My house must be perfect, my body must be perfect, my career must be perfect, my friendships must be perfect, and my Google search must be perfect.

During one of her exercises, Annie has me mess up my perfectly made bed, re-arrange my fluffed pillows, throw my folded blanket to the floor as "homeopathic amounts of disorganization." I can feel my heart palpitating, the disorder is physically uncomfortable. I feel a loss of control.

"Perfectionism is an invisible shackle keeping you back from being free and letting others be free around you," Annie says. "Imperfect is real, raw, wanton, and sexy." Then I learn one of the most important lessons of my adult life: Until I'm okay with my own imperfection, no one else can be.

I'd been living my life knowing that I wasn't perfect and ashamed of it, afraid that everyone would catch on and judge me the way I'd been judging myself. Meanwhile, I was desperately seeking unconditional love. Annie has me look in my big white floor-length mirror—actually look—and see the girl inside of me, the girl I would never judge so harshly. I begin to understand what my perfectionism had done to me and how the very walls I had put up to block others from seeing my messiness had actually kept them away. I was messy, deep down, but that mess was beautiful.

In that moment, I thought to myself for the first time, you know what? I'm pretty great, just the way I am. I realized that one day, someone will love me unconditionally—not because I've finally figured out how to be perfect, but because I've finally showed them my imperfections.